This is a famous photograph of an Arab woman that was featured on the cover of National Geographic in 1985.  It is included on the National Geographic list of their 100 best photographs.  The article says that she is 12 years old and she had fled from her native Afghanistan to a refuge camp in Pakistan.

Personal-

This photograph is so striking because intense gaze coming from this young girl.  Her eyes seem to pierce right through you and it is hard to maintain their gaze for an extended period of time.  There are so many things that I can see in her eyes.  She seems defiant and yet repressed.  There is hurt, pain, and suffering as well as a strong will and desire.  You can see that she is living in a world that is out of her control and she is very aware that things are not as they should be.

Historical-

This photograph was taken almost 20 years before the current war in the middle east had begun.  This article in the National Geographic magazine was the first publicity to draw attention to the issues of women’s suffering and oppression within this culture.  It led to women’s rights social groups and other social volunteers to start pouring into the area and start helping women and children.  National Geographic did a latter issue in 2002, inspired by all the media attention in the middle east after the events of September 11th, on the same woman.  It was tragic to see how much she had changed over the 17 years.  Her eyes were not longer as green, her nose had been broken several times, and her face was heavy and wrinkled.  They guessed her age to be in the early 30s but she looked twice that.

Technical-

The most obvious technical element in this photograph is the intense index vector coming from the girl’s eyes.  There is a key light coming from the right of the photograph which creates fall off around her features.  This is a extreme close up of her face.  The contrast in the color between the elements of the photograph also adds to the pleasure of the composition.  Her intense green eyes are balance but the equally bright green background and they contrast nicely with the warmer hue of her red bur qua around her head.  This lighting also highlights her face and makes it the focal point of the image.  The neutral tone of her tan skin also adds in the intensity of the eyes.

Ethical, Cultural, and Critical-

The ethical element of this analysis is the feeling that her eyes effect on the reader.  Her clothing is worn and torn and you know just by her ethnicity that she is living in a reign where she is severely oppressed.  Do you help her?  Do you feel that her stare is a warning?  Showing her defiance and strong will.  Can she handle her own?  If you feel that she deserves to be helped and saved from the world that she knows, why?

The cloth that she wears around her head is symbolic of middle eastern femininity.  But would she wear it if she had the choice?  Middle eastern femininity has not be allowing to thrive and evolve but it has been defined.  Women are often repressed and serrated in their culture.  They very rarely have a choice in anything that they do and are heavily directed and influenced but their male dominated society.